10
MACKIE
Kara showsup forty minutes before the end of my shift later that afternoon and installs herself at the corner of the counter with a latte and a look that tells me she has something to say.
I last about eight minutes before giving into her stare.
“Just say it.”
“You’re in love with him.”
“I’ve known him for like a month.” I’m wiping down the espresso machine and trying to sound casual but my hands are moving too fast, the way they always do when I’m lying, and Kara has known me since seventh grade so she can definitely see it.
“Mackie.” She wraps both hands around her cup. “You’ve been watching this guy for almost two years. You just couldn’t figure out how to talk to him because he’s notoriously shy and never shows up to any team events. You used to describe him to me as the guy who stays late when everyone else goes home and I would nod along and think ‘okay she’s normal’ and then you’d repeat his stats from memory and I would think ‘oh no’.”
I scrub at a spot on the counter just so I don’t have to look ather. She’s right about the stats. I had his save percentage memorized before I knew his middle name. Which is Robert by the way. That’s probably not a thing normal people do.
“Also,” she continues, “you areextremelyoff limits. Which raises the question—is this guy insane, or does he not know who your dad is?”
“He knows who my dad is.”
“So he explicitly said to you, Mackie Anderson, I am aware that dating you is completely unhinged because your father could pull strings with people who have been in hockey for longer than I’ve been alive and have me quietly removed from the roster and most likely from the earth and no one would even blink?—”
“He didn’t say it likethat?—”
“Has he saidanythinglike that? At all? Ever?”
I scrub the spot harder. Because she’s right and I hate that she’s right and it actually hadn’t occurred to me until just now. That when Rodriguez introduced us as “Mackie meet Zach. Zach meet Mackie” I figured it was a done deal. Or that they’d talked about it later. Or something. But I’m realizing now, with sickening clarity, that Kara is right. Zach isn’t insane. And I’m about 99% certain he doesn’t know my dad is on the team with him.
“Mackie.”
“...Fuck.”
Kara picks up her cup and raises her eyebrows at me over the rim. “Tell him tonight.”
“I will.” And I mean it. I have the absolute best intentions of telling him. I’m already rehearsing the words in my head.Zach, there’s something I need to tell you. Zach, my dad is on your team. Zach, you know Jack Anderson? Funny story.
None of them sound right.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” I say.
I’m sittingat what has to be the longest red light in recorded human history with bags of food on my passenger seat because I stopped for Korean corn dogs on the way to Zach’s and then realized you can’t eat street food without something sweet so I had to stop at a second place for bubble tea and now I can’t get Kara’s voice out of my head.
Zach knows who I am. He has to.
How else would I have gotten into the facility today? I said hi to my dad on the way in like I always do. I’ve been coming to that building since I was six years old and everyone in it knows my face. Zach has been on the team for almost two years. He’s seen me in the hallways. At family skates. At team events. I’m practically a permanent fixture and my dad’s an institution and... he has to know.
Except.
Except he’s the backup. He doesn’t really go to team dinners. He doesn’t do the family stuff. He and Rodriguez live in their own little world and Rodriguez introduced us as Mackie and Zach, no last names, why would there be last names, everyone knows me.
Everyone, except apparently, the one person I’ve spent the last two years obsessing over from the sidelines. Which is a thing I’m sitting with now. I assumed he knew who I was. I hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility that before Rodriguez dragged him into the coffee shop, Zach Almardon had never, not once, noticed me. While I was memorizing the back of his head from the family suite he had no idea I existed.
The light turns green and I don’t move until the car behind me honks.
Am I making this up? The whole thing? Because if he didn’t know who I was before the coffee shop then what exactly made him notice me that night at the bar and has everything since thenbeen me filling in gaps? Overcompensating? What if I stopped texting him tomorrow, would he even notice?
